Timothée Chalamet & Monica Barbaro Break Down Their Electrifying Recreation of 'It Ain’t Me Babe' by Bob Dylan & Joan Baez

Variety

Timothée Chalamet, Monica Barbaro, and Director James Mangold break down their electrifying recreation of 'It Ain’t Me Babe' in 'A Complete Unknown' in this episode of Variety's Making a Scene.

Transcript

00:00Yeah, but we do it all together.

00:02No! God, in unison. Should we harmonize it?

00:05Does it? Yes.

00:06And this is Variety's...

00:07Ready? Ready?

00:08And this is Variety's...

00:10You just went silent, Ed Norton.

00:12What's with you?

00:18Hi, this is James Mangold, writer-director of A Complete Unknown.

00:22Hi, I'm Timothy Shalama, and I play Bob Dylan.

00:24Hi, I'm Monica Barbaro, and I play Joan Baez.

00:26And this is Variety's Making a Scene.

00:29That was great.

00:30Yeah, but we were snickering.

00:31No, no, no, it ain't me, babe.

00:35It ain't me you're looking for, babe.

00:42Not that we were going for an academic recreation,

00:45but the original video of Bob and Joan doing this song in Newport,

00:48it is super informative.

00:49You know, they're really having a laugh.

00:50It seems like they have a secret or something.

00:52That was very informative, you know?

00:54I didn't want Monica to be like the girl singing with Bob.

00:58And I felt like there was a level.

00:59But it took us...

01:00We had to figure out how you could get close.

01:02I also wanted them close, and we kind of...

01:04I remember, was this the scene where we're trying to figure out

01:06how you could kind of...

01:07All kinds of back and forth, or like...

01:09But Joan, in other concerts I had seen,

01:11had this way of kind of bringing the neck up vertical,

01:13like she was playing, wasn't it?

01:15Yeah, yeah.

01:16Like a harp or something.

01:17It was a conscious decision to not just turn Monica

01:21into kind of the pips that she'd be kind of driving in.

01:26And that was about partly what the scene was about,

01:28that she had chosen the song.

01:30She was starting to play the song.

01:32He was either going to get on the train or not.

01:34And there's a kind of connectivity, dramatically,

01:36to a previous concert where he wouldn't play the song she chose.

01:40And this one, she's kind of diving in with me or without me.

01:44So there's also a kind of intra-scene dialogue going on

01:48between them about shit that's already gone down in the past.

01:51Pick something appropriate.

01:53Appropriate?

01:55Fuck off and sing.

01:57The song we play in that moment in the story of the film

02:00is like very on the nose,

02:02but I appreciate that that's intentional.

02:05And that she's like, yeah, I picked something appropriate,

02:07just fuck off and sing.

02:09And what I love, too, is you watch a lot of footage

02:11of Joan being very intentional

02:13and put together about her answers.

02:15And yet when you learn about her,

02:17she is a person who would say something like,

02:19fuck off and sing,

02:21but she wasn't doing that sort of publicly so much.

02:24You have the lens sort of behind the scenes

02:26of her flipping him off and saying fuck off.

02:28And the audience doesn't necessarily get that

02:31until decades later when she talks about the way she was.

02:34But we just kind of peek at that little bit of bite.

02:38Just fuck off and sing.

02:40What I love, the rapport between Timmy and Monica,

02:43and more specifically Bob and Joan,

02:46is she's formidable.

02:48Everyone at this point in the story

02:50is kind of dancing on eggshells around Bob,

02:53not Joan's posture.

02:55And so it adds a kind of degree of difficulty for Bob

02:58that's fun to watch.

03:00Because he's dealing with someone

03:02who's not going to take a certain level of shit,

03:04and may even be giving it back a little bit.

03:06In terms of the music,

03:08I mean, it was important to all of us

03:10to not have a bunch of sort of carbon copies

03:12of these musicians,

03:14or any sort of sign of mimicry in the film.

03:17And yet they have to be recognizable versions

03:20of these musicians.

03:22It's such a music-oriented scene.

03:24I mean, the main thing for me with Joan

03:27was working on having a certain level of vibrato,

03:30and a certain quality of tone,

03:32and to learn to play guitar

03:34in sort of a similar way to the way she did.

03:36Her finger-picking style.

03:38Yeah, her finger-picking, which that song,

03:40It Ain't Me Babe, is not as much of that.

03:42And actually at a certain point I got better at finger-picking,

03:45and the strumming was actually really hard for me.

03:47Just having those sort of touch points of the person

03:50so that there is that recognizability there.

03:52But then once you get into it,

03:54you hope you're in it so deeply

03:56that you can just sort of have a version of the person.

03:59You say you're looking for someone

04:03Never weak, but always strong

04:07I just love that song,

04:09and I feel like Jim gave us the runway

04:11to play them out as the characters we were in the movie.

04:14I really do believe this is a Jim interview

04:16because I was in Bob World,

04:18which is a much better description.

04:20Monica was in Joan World.

04:22But kudos to Jim, who really had his eye

04:24the whole movie on the fact that

04:26to watch actors do karaoke

04:28really isn't interesting.

04:30And it's really about,

04:32that's why I feel like Elle Fanning should be here right now.

04:34She's the anchor point of the scene.

04:36She's the anchor point of the scene, you know.

04:38And Jim always had his eye on story coming first.

04:40And it really is a great scene to break down in that regard.

04:42I know we shouldn't pat ourselves on the back

04:44or pat you on the back in front of you.

04:46It should be behind closed doors.

04:48I'm not the one you want, babe

04:52I'm not the one you need

04:56We had background artists

04:58that were fully engaged.

05:00I had a wonderful dance partner with Monica.

05:02And then we were able to play,

05:04I'm sure the version you see in the movies,

05:06I'm guessing different than

05:08the six or seven other versions we did.

05:10Yeah, there were dozens of versions.

05:12We did, I think, perform that one least

05:14because I had to run.

05:16I was throwing off my guitar

05:18and the hair

05:20and I had to get on a plane

05:22to shoot another project at the same time.

05:24And so that, of all things,

05:26was actually the thing we shot

05:28the least footage of.

05:30But the reason they're always singing live

05:32is honestly because they're breathing.

05:34They have to be.

05:36Meaning they have to be moving oxygen through.

05:38It's like you can't be going,

05:40you can't be doing that.

05:42You have to actually do it

05:44or else it just is a fraud.

05:46But honestly, that was at a point

05:48where they had both gotten in a pretty good groove.

05:50There's a lot of choices to make

05:52in how you shoot a scene

05:54and how you move your actors through that space.

05:56And there's a journey of focus

05:58that kind of starts with optimism

06:00and Bob heading out on the stage

06:02and joining Joan.

06:04What's always fascinated me,

06:06Timmy's done stage work and may know this

06:08and I think the actors know this

06:10anyway, but is this kind of weird

06:12contradiction you feel on stage

06:14in terms of

06:16you're in front of so many thousands of people

06:18sometimes and yet

06:20the intimacy you feel with

06:22the people who you're on stage with.

06:24I don't mean just the intimacy

06:26of playing a character but the sense of

06:28intimacy as actors

06:30or that you're really,

06:32it's you and them.

06:34And there may be all these eyeballs on you

06:36but there's a kind of focused

06:38connection

06:40that you have that's kind of

06:42intense. That's why the camera

06:44in the scene lives

06:46not shooting so much what the audience

06:48would see. For instance, the kind of

06:50row one kind of

06:52hero shot of your actors

06:54as it would have been if you were in the audience.

06:56But it lives in

06:58this world really

07:00using the anamorphic frame to kind of really

07:02almost make this beautiful, beautiful

07:04composition from either side

07:06of Timmy and Monica

07:08kind of together

07:10and the connection that Mike

07:12forcing them to be at this shared

07:14distance, all of which kind of

07:16brings on other aspects of kind of

07:18intimacy, romance,

07:20sexuality, all of that is going

07:22on as they're singing a song about not

07:24needing each other. And they've entered

07:26the song almost in the midst

07:28of a kind of grudge, at least from

07:30Joan's point of view offering him the finger

07:32at the moment he's coming on stage

07:34and to see that the second the

07:36song begins, these two

07:38lovers and friends and

07:40also in a sense competitors sometimes

07:42land in the scene

07:44and instantly fall in.

07:46All the bullshit of real life

07:48or life problems drops

07:50away and the song

07:52carries them to this magical place where

07:54they're like kind of this perfect couple.

07:56Their voices, their

07:58connection to each other, those shots

08:00holding the two of them

08:02with the audience in the background

08:04you can see the thousands of people

08:06behind them, but they've also

08:08vanished because you're really focused

08:10on this kind of connection between

08:12these two, which is of course

08:14what then drives the second movement

08:16of the scene, which is how

08:18destabilizing it is for someone

08:20who loves Timmy's character and is on the

08:22outside and cannot play a song

08:24and cannot in a way ever have

08:26that kind of connection with him.

08:28Someone to open each and

08:30every door

08:32when they need me.

08:34Some of the crowd is

08:36digitally created in the distance, but

08:38you still had about 200 extras

08:40and I've got Monica leaving in two

08:42hours and so we're doing what

08:44we can with multiple cameras, but you still

08:46the way I shoot, there's only so

08:48much you can do because I don't use long

08:50lenses where you can kind of aim a battery

08:52of cameras. The proxemics of the lens

08:54to the actors is really close.

08:56You try and do that also because

08:58every take is a little different and

09:00if you roll more than one camera at the same

09:02time, you always have one other shot

09:04that you know is going to match.

09:06So it gives you one option

09:08out because I love that

09:10they're finding new things, but there's

09:12sometimes when you do find one where you

09:14love the choices they made and they never

09:16made any choice like that in another take,

09:18you can be trapped.

09:20Those are the advantages of

09:22multiple cameras, but we did do it

09:24a lot of times. What makes

09:26Bob and Joan the characters in that period

09:28and hopefully what Monica and I were able to bring to it

09:30you know

09:32beyond what a

09:34hair rock concert would be where it's playing

09:36to 80,000 people or something. This is really

09:38about two characters

09:40sharing something. And I think that idea

09:42of the secret is really what I needed to drive

09:44the scene because ultimately I've

09:46got to get it to where Elle

09:48is driven away by whatever

09:50she's seeing on stage and

09:52nothing is really more

09:54destabilizing for a lover

09:56than to watch your

09:58partner having a kind

10:00of secret with another.

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